Apple Remove Samba From OS X 10.7 Because of GPLv3 1075
recoiledsnake writes "The upcoming release of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Server will remove the formerly bundled open source Samba software and replace it with Apple's own tools for Windows file sharing and network directory services. In both Mac OS X Server and client editions, Samba enables Macs to share files with Windows clients on the network and access Windows file servers. It has also later allowed Mac OS X Server to work as an NT Domain Controller to manage network accounts and make roaming profiles and home directories available to Windows PC users. However, the Samba team has moved active development of the project to the more strict GPLv3 license, which prevents Apple from using the software commercially. Apple is now said to be recommending Active Directory to users who are still dependent upon the older NT Domain Controller network directory services. Apple has previously stopped contributing code to GCC and started looking at other options like LLVM because of GCC's switch to GPLv3."
Re:GPL is the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
And under the GPLv3, you can still do whatever YOU want. The exception comes when you redistribute, because at that point it's not YOU using it, it's SOMEONE ELSE.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Could the summary be more terrible? (Score:5, Interesting)
Kind'a. It prevents Apple using the software commercially within its business methods and business strategy.
Apple is a known "patents at dawn" company. That does not fit the GPLv3 mutual assured destruction patent clauses.
So while other companies can use GPLv3 commercially, Apple cannot do so. It will be in violation of the license the next time it tries to lob a patent nuke which is something it does on a regular basis.
Unfortunately, Apple is not alone here. Nearly all big companies are in the same position and they will follow suit. While I understand RMS aims and ideas here, that is really not the way. GPL should not be a replacement for court, legislation and enforcement.
Re:GPL is the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
That's because it's not liberty for YOU (that's already been granted) but for whomever gets it from you. Stop being so greedy and self-centered with your thought process.
Re:GPL is the problem (Score:3, Interesting)
You're either for software freedom or your not. GPL restricts what you can, therefor is not free.
This kind of "either you see it my way our you're wrong" statement is NOT a good argument.
GP didn't make a qualitative categorization of the rightness or wrongness of either position. You did that.
Re:Not specifically due to GPLv3. (Score:3, Interesting)
And thus the tenets of Free Software relating to code availability and reusability are served with GPLv3 ... not!
With GPLv3 it's an all-or-nothing situation: either the whole world will use Linux and be strictly copyleft, or it will avoid it and companies will reimplement the parts they need in a way that's more closed than before. That is why GPLv3 is a mistake.
Re:GPL is the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Those who release code under a BSD license know that down-stream users can take the code wholesale, or make modifications, and do with it what they will. Those people aren't complaining about it. The only people who seem to make an issue out of it are people who haven't or wouldn't release code under a BSD license. Licenses are essentially a religious debate at this point, so please pardon my analogy when I say that pretending there is a debate on the BSD license is like pretending their is a debate on ID vs Evolution. Only one side is interested in having a debate, and that means there is no debate.
Re:Not specifically due to GPLv3. (Score:5, Interesting)
> "Do you want to give a justification of why you are willing to
> keep using the GPL even though it means companies like
> Apple are not willing to use your software?"
Sure. Apple have never been a major contributor to Samba. Other companies like Google, IBM, Cisco, Symantec (and many other NAS vendors and OEM's) are happy to contribute and use Samba under GPL (both v2 and v3), so the GPL is still a vital tool to share development costs between companies who want to *contribute*, not just use.
IMHO Apple want to keep their ability to sue over software patents, which the GPL is designed to make difficult.
If you've been following the news recently I hope you see why this is becoming more and more important for Free Software code. Sort of off-topic, but software patents really are a threat to all software engineers and they don't distinguish between open source or proprietary code :-(.
Jeremy.
Re:Article and summary get it wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
Nothing in the GPLv3 prohibits using the software commercially, unless that means taking software that others wrote and released and making it unfree.
Really? What does DRM and keys have to do with the source code? If you take a binary created by GPL'ed code and then sign in with a key, what does that have to do with the original source? How is that different that compiling a binary, saving it in a password projected zip file? If you contribute any changes made to the actual code the binary is based on, shouldn't that be enough? I would argue that GPLV3 is a violation of copyright law. I should be free to take GPL'ed code, compile it into a binary, burn it onto a CD, defecate on that CD and then run over it with a truck if I want to. I would argue that how the binary is packaged is of no business to the original copyright lowers and it is an overreach of their rights under copyright law. I should be allowed to package it how I see fit as long as I contribute any source code changes needed to compile the same binary.
I would argue that there is no need for GPL Version 3 and that Version 2 is the better license. GPL Version 3 will the the undoing of many projects in the FOSS movement as more companies realize that they have been screwed over by the projects they contributed to in good faith when it was under GPL Version 2.
Re:Closed ecosystem (Score:5, Interesting)
Pretty much everyone working on core Mac OS X components has a *BSD background -- mostly former FreeBSD developers who were hired by Apple.
All major BSDs are reluctant to even allow GPLv2 in their base system. They all don't like the whole copyleft concept at all. GPLv3 is completely forbidden in the base installation.
Apple's Darwin team has a BSD culture which is apparent that Apple itself is moving away from the LGPL-like 'Apple Public Source License' to the BSDL-like Apache License 2 for Apple's own newer FOSS projects like libdispatch.
GPLv3's anti-TIVO-ization clause was just the last nail in the coffin of Apple's GPL endorsement.
Re:Closed ecosystem (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Also maybe because Samba is getting too good (Score:5, Interesting)
> So, a couple interesting things related to CIFS came to light
> not long ago. The first was playing with Macs. They suck at
> it, horrible performance. In 10.4 they couldn't even talk to the
> NetApp with CIFS at all, they could talk to Windows servers
> but slowly. NFS worked but it was a disaster trying to get
> permissions to work right.
>
> We figured this was in part because they use Samba which
> is not necessarily the fastest thing out there, and was
> originally designed for reverse engineering SMB, not a
> reference CIFS implementation like the NetApp.
Oh dear. Is NetApp marketing really this good ?
Firstly - the Mac client is written by Apple and is called smbfs, it's not Samba at all. It is Open Source code, released by Apple in Darwin. I know the engineers who write it, and they're really good and have been working on it for a while, so I'm sure it's gotten better since you tried it.
Secondly, "a reference CIFS implementation like the NetApp." !!!!
Oh. My. God. :-). NetApps CIFS implementation was written well after Samba, with some judicious peeks at the Samba code in order to implement the hard stuff (this was before Microsoft released their docs). That's ok, that's one of the reasons the Samba code is out there, so people can learn from it.
As for being "a reference CIFS implementation". Just try running Samba's smbtorture4 test suite against NetApp's "a reference CIFS implementation" to discover how much of a "reference" they actually implemented.
Jeremy.
Re:Also maybe because Samba is getting too good (Score:5, Interesting)
No it is more in testing. What I find is this:
Windows to Windows: Wire speed.
Windows to NetApp: Wire speed.
Windows to (current) Linux: Wire speed.
MacOS to NetApp: Slow.
MacOS to Windows: Slow.
MacOS with ADmitMac to NetApp: Wire speed.
MacOS with ADmitMac to Windows: Wire speed.
This is with current OS 10.6. With older MacOS it didn't work with the NetApp at all.
Like it or not, this is what my testing indicates, and my only conclusion can be that Apple either is using code that is bad with CIFS, or that they are making it slow on purpose. Like I said, Thursby (who makes ADmitMac) has a grade-A CIFS client and we license their software in part because of it.